Epic Report graph extends forever

[Sam Newman]

Hello, 

I have an Epic that I marked "Done" from the Backlog so it no longer appears on the Epic list in the Backlog view.  But when I look at the Epic Report the graph shows data up to the current date. Since this Epic was finished several years ago the Graph compresses that actual time we worked on it and shows a lot of useless data. 

How do I get the graph to only show up to the time I marked the Epic "Done" in the Backlog? 

[Christine Donnelly]

@AhmadDanial Hi, is this on the roadmap to improve? My team would get great value also!

1. I think I'd prefer the timeline stop when the Epic is Closed or Done then IF it gets Reopened it can start up again from the original issue dates, but I know that can get tricky and appreciate your explanation of why you can't/shouldn't. 
2. Instead maybe the Epic can show a dynamic date range view (i.e. don't end the graph with today but end it with the most recent activity)
3. Or add a date range selector in the view. Honestly if it's a big & long Epic (which some are even when they don't have this issue) then it can also be hard to use the mouseovers in the graph because everything's squeezed together, so it'd help that too.

[AhmadDanial]

Hi there, Sam.

The first thing that came through my mind when I saw the graph and verified that all issues are completed and the story points are done is the column mapping that is configured for this Scrum project according to the Understanding the Epic Report page:

The Epic Report is based on your board's column mapping. An issue is considered to be 'To Do' when it is in a status that has been mapped to the left-most column of your board. Similarly, an issue is considered to be 'Done' when it is in a status that has been mapped to the right-most column of your board. See Configuring columns for more information.

Since you mentioned that the Epic was marked as Done already, can you please provide me with the screen shot of the Column Management section of this board? For example:

This will confirm if the Done was set to right most column or otherwise. Thank you.

[Sam Newman]

Helllo Ahmed, 

I created a test Epic, put some issues into it, and closed them.  Then I set the Status of the epic to Closed, then I set the "Epic Status" (different field) to Done as well. 

The Epic Report graph continues to grow.  Any ideas? 

[AhmadDanial]

Hi there, Sam.

Thank you for the detailed clarification. I had a discussion with the team on this and based on the examples provided, we cannot stop the timeline as it is a report based on "today" and is mainly for tracking any un-estimated or incomplete stories. Once it's done, there shouldn't be a need to track remaining incomplete / un-estimated work by default.

Nevertheless, I see your point of having the ability to restrict the timeframe in the graph in case there is a need to revisit closed Epic graphs in the future. Ideally, you would like to have the ability to adjust the timeframe of the graph to make it look cleaner and not include unnecessary dates. 

Let us gather more thoughts on this to see how we can proceed. If you would like me to create a suggestion to get a more detailed explanation from the dev team, please let let me know.

[Sam Newman]

Thanks Ahmed, 

The use case for me is that I want to be able to see the completion time for a project (Epic) so I can use it for estimating other similar projects before going deep into the story writing/poker process. I was expecitng the Epic Report graph to behave similarly to the Version Report graph in that it stops on the Completed date set for the Fix Version. 

It would be usefull to have the Epic Report behave in a similar way or have some other way to get the information I am looking for (time to complete an Epic.) 

Thanks! 

-SN